The Gulf Coast Blog

Craft • Culture • News

Craft • Culture • News

Gulf Coast Online Editor

Before I ever started writing, I was a musician. I started in the fifth grade, as soon as the option to learn an instrument became available at school, and I learned first (clumsily) on the snare drum that had once been a part of my father's drumset -…

Ian Stansel

FIRST½ We're currently accepting entries for the 2011 Gulf Coast Prizes. This year we have raised the prize money to $1,500 for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry winners, plus $250 for two runners-up in each genre. That's a total of $6,000 in prizes. The…

Zachary Martin

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I've been spending the winter break reading "campus novels." Even if you've never heard the term before, you've almost certainly read one: DeLillo's White Noise; Cather's The Professor's House; Coetzee's Disgrace;…

Zack Bean

The last time I almost got into a fight was five years ago. There was a really obnoxious guy at a friend's house - an assistant professor of biochemistry or something from Rutgers, somebody's boyfriend, I forget his name but let's call him Dick - sitting…

Christine Ha

I am a third-year graduate student in Creative Writing and yet, I was illiterate for most of my time in the program. I wasn't illiterate all my life--just for the past four years. Let me explain. In 1999, I began losing my vision due to what I'd find…

Sophie Klahr

How to write about the recent violence coursing through the young LGBT world? I could list here the number of suicides committed by gay youth in the past year, the weight of that number, but, like the statistics of global genocide, the statistics of drug-related…

Becca Wadlinger

Blog readers, I can think of nothing more important than to share this link and letter from poet and UH professor Tony Hoagland. Please read the letter below, visit the link, and help in any way you can. Rebecca Wadlinger, Managing Editor http://www.transplants.org/donate/deanyoung…

Edward Porter

Inevitably over the holidays, someone asks you what you're doing in a graduate program. My standard answer is, "I'm a writer who doesn't want to die in a ditch." That probably sounds like a joke, but it's not: it happens. For reasons too obscure to go…

Ryan OMalley

I've attached a video here that many of you have probably viewed, or if you haven't, you're just too ADD-addled to watch it: the video shows Bill Murray reading poetry. In case this isn't already something in the vein of Bill Murray (doing odd things,…

Eric Howerton

I was driving by a restaurant I'd been meaning to try (Julia's Bistro? Sheba? The Breakfast Club?) when a pothole jostled my car and brain. Houston is known for its potholes. Recovering from the jolt, I found myself thinking of a professor at the University…